How Should We Look at History?

Hold it up? Seal it off? Or Break it Down?

Dear Classical Wisdom Reader,

Enough ink has been split regarding the latest fiasco with Google’s Gemini AI image generator and its poorly ascribed black Nazis, Indian Edisons and Asian American founding fathers. It’s absurd to say the least... but also deeply problematic. In part because it taps into a much, much larger question on how we should treat history in the first place… 

Now, the reasons to do so in these humble pages are surely obvious enough. The Classics are regularly condemned and canceled because of a (wrongly) perceived lack of diversity. The thousands of years have literally washed the monuments white and the true bright colors of the past have been marginalized. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of issues found among the brilliant ideas. Slavery, misogyny, pederasty are just a few that spring to mind. 

So how do we deal with these issues? Nietzsche offered a few methods for looking at the past - outlining our propensity to monumentalise, conserve as well as critique. We find larger than life characters, like Alexander the Great, and attribute larger than life abilities to them... and yet even a momentary glance, a scratch at this historic veneer, reveals history’s figures to be only human... all too human. 

Alexander the Great… reminding himself that he is human….

But that doesn’t stop us from trying to preserve the history that we have, to carefully dust the documents and safely secure them in glass boxes for the next generation... This is great if history is to provide only a passive relationship, to be watched and admired, rather than engaged and contemplated. 

Which leads us to the third approach: The critical eye that wants to dismantle what has happened. Time to take these old minds off the pedestal and into the sparring ring. We shouldn’t just *accept* everything they say after all, right? 

So where does this leave us... how should relate to the annals of time and those who carried humanity’s glories and foibles? Hold them up? Seal them off? Or break them down? 

Essentially: How Should We Look at History? 

As always, you can reply to this email, write to me directly at anya@classicalwisdom.com or comment below. 

And as a natural follow through from the mailbag question above which addresses history in general, please enjoy below your fellow Classics lovers’ thoughts regarding the particulars of one ‘monumental’ man - none other than Julius Caesar.

Should we glorify him? 

All the best,

Anya Leonard

Founder and Director
Classical Wisdom

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Monday Mailbag: 

Re: Should we Glorify Caesar? 

The basic answer is: no, we should not glorify Caesar. He committed atrocities in Gaul (France), he was responsible for establishing military autocracy as the governing system at Rome, he was an out and out imperialist.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't appreciate him properly. He was not assassinated because he was unpopular. Quite the contrary: he was hugely popular, so much so that the assassins who killed him found themselves reviled and loathed by the people of Rome, most of the Senate of Rome, and the Roman armies, and were forced to flee for their lives within months of the assassination. Few if any lived more than 2 or 3 years after the assassination, they were so widely hated.

The regime Caesar overthrew at Rome and replaced by military autocracy was a corrupt, brutal, and cruel kleptocracy of a few dozen hereditary nobles who thought the world was their plaything by hereditary right, and who killed Caesar for expecting them to behave honestly, honorably and efficiently as governors of the Mediterranean world. That doesn't make Caesar any paradigm of virtue for overthrowing them; but in requiring that the Roman empire be governed honestly and efficiently he at least was better than the kleptocratic system he replaced. And that is worth something.

Also, of course, he was a political and military genius -- one of the great military geniuses in world history, fwiw -- and a brilliant writer. I guess that counts for something too.

He doesn't need or deserve to be glorified; but he did do some amazing things, and some of it was good.

Richard B.

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Caesar killed 1 million Celts and enslaved another 1 million in his Gallic War. So nothing to glorify about him. Just my humble opinion.

Instead let‘s glorify people like Gandhi or from ancient times Socrates.

Michael

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No, we clearly should not glorify Caesar. Caesar finished the Roman Republic, and there is no glory in it. We might cherish his military, literary, and political talents, but not Caesar the man. Glory is deserved for Cicero, Brutus, or Pompey. But not for Caesar. The glorification of Caesar is a reminder of monarchical times, when monarchs were really monarchs, and not only symbols of the state. We have left these times behind. The disadvantages of one man ruling over everything can currently be observed in China: Even a genius cannot produce the results of a republican government with checks and balances. Though the "grid" in a republican government is often "locked", it preserves us from major mistakes and drives us to unite to take action. And we know this since Plato's Laws, long before Caesar's times.

With best regards

Thorwald C. F.

Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

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Nobody is 100% right or good 100% of the time, nobody then should be glorified, but we should consider a person in his entirety and if possible, learn values we can implement in our life to improve ourselves. Julius Caesar was one of the most successful emperors, which means he ordered the invasions and assassinations of many people, and he didn't consider other people's needs and desires, so this was a cause of his death. We can learn from him about his effort to be educated and a good public speaker or about being resilient, persistent and that a real leader is able to negotiate and consider other people's needs. 

Nowadays, and learning from that, you can already see how our actual leaders are failing miserably and how people without clear values are fuelling the problems.

Nicola

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"Should We Glorify Caesar?" ... Alternative: "Should Caesar's Assassins Be Lamented as Failed Patriots?"

By the Middle Ages, Dante Alighieri assuredly rejected such an alternative notion. Dante's Inferno (The Divine Comedy), past the nine circles, at the depth of hell, reveals a three-headed satan munching eternally on the conspirators Brutus (left mouth) and Cassius (right mouth) along with Judas Iscariot (center mouth) -- the arch traitor of all time). Much has evolved, devolved, revolved since 1300 AD (CE). Is it time to revisit the motives of Brutus, Cassius, Labeo, Cimber, Basilus, Casca, Aquila, et al.?

Jimmy J.

Growing up. I loved history (still do) I liked learning about men like Caesar, Alexander, etc. and for the longest time I was on Caesar's side, but after more learning I realize it's more gray than that. While he did help the plebs he also slaughtered the Gauls without mercy in a war that was questionable. I've also come to respect Brutus more as a decent and honorable man who did his best to save Rome and its traditions, but sadly I fear the corrupt of the late republic was too deep and if it wasn't Caesar it would've been someone else. Peace and great article.

Crusader

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Mark Anthony said to bury Caesar not praise him. Of course, he used this as a launch point to attack the conspirators and inflame the mobs against them. When Caesar’s loyal legions reached the Rubicon, tradition required them to lay down their arms before crossing. They chose not to and marched in line of attack over the river. Caesar replaced the republic, but the republic had decayed and fractured after the vanquishment of Carthage. The energy expended to win that struggle undermined and weakened the republic just as the cold war did to modern America. The debt created could not be repaid and interest had to be obtained from ever increasing conquest. Sound familiar? Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan….

Caesar sought to replace this fractured system with unity of command. A dictator is a dictator regardless of military success and public acclaim. The Bible says beware should people think too much of you. Shakespeare aka ghostwriter Francis Bacon encapsulated this admonition with beware the ides of March literally the God of War. Glorify this? Not exactly. 

Charles F.